"Taxpayers will fund compensation payments to disgruntled tenderers of the NSW government's $5 billion Sydney metro plan that has been officially shelved.

Premier Kristina Keneally would not disclose how many millions of dollars had been lost on the failed project but says private contractors will be compensated."

It is so depressing. I remember the hoopla about the Olympics and people who know me understand that I was a vocal opponent. So much time, money and effort in Sydney has been wasted by a whole series of successive leaders who are apparently incompetent.

Each time I travel back, I hear the locals complaining that the traffic is getting worse and worse; we hear the stories of the many other infrastructure failures (collapsing roads) and abandonment of projects like electronic ticketing for public transport. Yet now you cannot drive across or under the harbor without an electronic toll pass and you pay handsomely for the priviledge, and the public/private partnership toll roads ring the city and transect it, but God forbid you might want to catch a train or a bus or a light rail, where all the attempts have been amateurish to bring a 21st century infrastructure to the city.

I suppose Sydneysiders don't care, because if they did wouldn't they do something about it like elect leadership who were actually capable of doing the job?

"Taxpayers will fund compensation payments to disgruntled tenderers of the NSW government's $5 billion Sydney metro plan that has been officially shelved.

Premier Kristina Keneally would not disclose how many millions of dollars had been lost on the failed project but says private contractors will be compensated."

It is so depressing. I remember the hoopla about the Olympics and people who know me understand that I was a vocal opponent. So much time, money and effort in Sydney has been wasted by a whole series of successive leaders who are apparently incompetent.

Each time I travel back, I hear the locals complaining that the traffic is getting worse and worse; we hear the stories of the many other infrastructure failures (collapsing roads) and abandonment of projects like electronic ticketing for public transport. Yet now you cannot drive across or under the harbor without an electronic toll pass and you pay handsomely for the priviledge, and the public/private partnership toll roads ring the city and transect it, but God forbid you might want to catch a train or a bus or a light rail, where all the attempts have been amateurish to bring a 21st century infrastructure to the city.

I suppose Sydneysiders don't care, because if they did wouldn't they do something about it like elect leadership who were actually capable of doing the job?